


Hold Me Fast And Fear Me Not

by CasGetYourShotgun



Series: Away To Carterhaugh [1]
Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Dream Cycle - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: (ghouls are creepy and weird but they really do mean well), (it's mostly in the background but carter really does need some), Alternate Ending, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ballad 39: Tam Lin, Bittersweet Ending, CGYS Rarepair Hell, Character Development, Fairy Tale Retellings, Ghouls, Hugs, Interspecies Awkwardness, M/M, Mild Blood, Mutual Pining, POV Nonhuman, Schrodinger's Character Death, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Unresolved Romantic Tension, author borrows a minor plot element from 'through the gates of the silver key', but there is no tag for the weirdly specific scenario here, i still love that that's a tag, then goes right back to pretending it doesn't exist, this isn't really major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:08:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27291682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CasGetYourShotgun/pseuds/CasGetYourShotgun
Summary: One universe sideways, Randolph Carter did not awaken from his ill-advised quest for Unknown Kadath.In a more conventional story, the human would set out to rescue the changeling from the creatures that took them captive, but then, Richard Upton Pickman was never terribly interested in adhering to convention.
Relationships: Randolph Carter/Richard Upton Pickman
Series: Away To Carterhaugh [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2166486
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13
Collections: Tam Lin Fan Lin





	Hold Me Fast And Fear Me Not

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween! Have some content!
> 
> The title comes from version A of the Tam Lin ballad, but my primary source was once again version B. 
> 
> Abby is named after Abigail Peters in Maurice Lane's confusingly-named Pickman's Model prequel, 'Pickman's Model'. Amina, Arif, and Bera are borrowed from Joshua Reynolds' 'The Ghoul's Portrait'. I believe it was Ruthanna Emrys who posited the idea of the Dreamlands as 'convenient long-term archetype storage'.
> 
> My thanks to Farisya for helping me with the dialogue.
> 
> (Warnings for captivity, implied brainwashing, and vague implications of related nastiness, because this is a Lovecraftian Tam Lin AU, and also for what can only be described as 'romanticised anthropophagy', because ghouls are rather upsetting creatures.)

Randolph Carter never came back from Kadath, or if he had nobody had heard anything from him since. Most of the clan didn't think much of it - if he was dead, something would eat him and be glad of the meal, and if he lived, well, humans had never cared much for ghouls, and it wasn't remarkable for one to make use of their services and never even thank them. That's not to say it didn't sting coming from someone who had shown kindness and offered assistance, ulterior motive or not, but it had happened before and would happen again.

Pickman could never quite bring himself to accept either possibility. Carter had been clearly repulsed by his people, as much as he’d tried to conceal it, but Pickman knew he would have made the effort to confirm their survival, for his own peace of mind if nothing else.

But the idea of his being dead - that inquisitive mind and adventurous spirit extinguished forever - couldn't be right, either. Carter was bright and brilliant and fundamentally  _ alive  _ in a way Pickman had always found intoxicating.

He managed to maintain that belief for about a week before someone found the grave.

Randolph Carter had died in the waking world, and someone - not one of Pickman's clan - had already picked his bones clean. Said bones were mostly intact, and there was likely to be marrow left behind, but Pickman would not desecrate the remains further by breaking them. It was bad enough that someone else had gotten here first, devoured just another source of meat. Pickman would have savoured him like he deserved.

But life went on. 

Seasons changed. Hunts were begun and completed. Amina disappeared for two days and returned with a scimitar retrieved from the Vale of Pnath, which she wore on her belt opposite her sabre for three weeks before lending it to a particularly late-blooming changeling. Nobody cared enough to find out who had laid claim to Carter's body, and Pickman did not have the time to track them down himself.

They failed to take down a gug and had to beat a hasty retreat. The changeling's claws grew in at last, and he got into a scrap with Amina when he refused to give the sword back. Elders died. Children were born. Pickman returned to the cemeteries of Boston, but never to Carter's grave.

And then the dreams began.

* * *

_ He'd walked the streets of Boston thousands of times in his old human shape, enough to recognise its skyline, and whilst he could find familiar landmarks they were not where they should be, interspersed amongst architecture he had never seen. And somehow that human facade was back in place, as though he had never evolved beyond it. _

_ The one spot of true familiarity in this unfamiliar place was Carter, gilded by the last rays of sun, and walking at his side as he often had before. _

_ But Carter could have talked enthusiastically for hours. This Carter was anxious, tense, and although he tried to speak Pickman could not hear a single word he said. _

Throughout the rest of that day, Pickman found himself haunted by the terrified look in those familiar pale grey eyes.

* * *

_ The park, he was certain, was quite lovely, and Carter seemed perfectly suited to it, as though he had been created specifically to be a part of it, or it had been crafted for him. If Pickman had been a different man, he might have painted Carter this way, seated on the carved bench before the silver fountain, bathed in the soft pinks and oranges of sunset. But he had always been drawn to the starker beauty of caverns and graveyards, and to the comforting darkness of the night. To him, the scent of jasmine and bergamot was cloying rather than soothing, and any aesthetic enjoyment he might have seen in Carter's presence could not survive when faced with the pitiful expression on his face.  _

_ Carter reached out to take his blunt-clawed human hands, but they passed through each other as though one or both of them were no more substantial than the perfumed air, and he still could make no sound. _

Pickman lay awake for a while after that, and tried not to think about holding Carter's heart in his hands.

* * *

_ This dream was different. He perched upon the Crag of the Ghouls, looking out across the Vale of Pnath, and he might not have known he was dreaming at all, but for the absence of any living thing save himself. _

_ And one other. _

_ "Pickman?" _

_ He turned in the direction of the voice. _

_ Carter did not look as at home as he had done in the sunset city of previous dreams, in the sunlight and amidst the trappings of humanity that Pickman had never wanted, but he looked far more concrete, somehow, substantial in a way that he had not been before.  _

_ "Pickman!" Carter said again, shocked and delighted that his voice worked again. And then he did something quite un-Carter-like, and ran the few feet separating them to throw his arms around Pickman and cling to him as though his life depended on it, as though the still air of Pnath and Thok was a gale or a riptide, and if he did not dig his nails into Pickman's shoulders he would be swept away.  _

_ In reality, Carter would never have touched a ghoul if he could help it, and so Pickman knew for certain that this could be nothing but a dream - but if it was a dream, there could be no harm in savouring Carter's human warmth against his cooler form, or in bringing his arms to wrap around his friend's back. Carter's heartbeat thrummed against his skin. _

_ "Pickman- Richard! You  _ must _ help me!" Carter cried, and this too was unlike him. "Please!" _

"But you're dead,"  _ he wanted to say, but he did not. Instead what came out was "How?" _

_ "I'm not dead, Richard. I am certain that my waking self has perished, but my dream-self never left Kadath. Nyarlathotep kept me there, I believe as punishment for my hubris, or perhaps because it amused him to do so. Perhaps it is best I do not know his reasons." _

_ Pickman's blood ran cold at this. Ghouls in general have little fear of or interest in the gods and their doings, but Nyarlathotep was well-known across worlds for his malice and capriciousness, and if he was the force that had banished the ghouls from Kadath then Pickman knew beyond doubt that it was only their alliance with the night-gaunts, sworn in turn to the one entity that the Crawling Chaos feared, that had saved them from being utterly destroyed. _

_ "I am unharmed for now," Carter continued, "but I'm to be carried off to the Court of Azathoth tomorrow night, and I know that I will not survive that!" _

_ "But what can  _ I  _ do?" asked Pickman, horrified. _

_ "There are certain rites in the Dreamlands, laid down perhaps by forces older than the Other Gods, or stronger, and that even Nyarlathotep is bound by. If you come to Kadath and pull me from my mount, and hold me, unaided and without letting me go - and he  _ will _ try and make you let me go - he will have to set me free." _

_ Pickman's claws caught in the fabric of Carter's jacket. "I won't let you go," he promised. _

_ Carter broke their embrace, and pulled an object from around his neck. He pressed the key and its cord into Pickman's hand, and seemed a little less distressed than he had done before. _

And then Pickman awoke in his burrow, hours from Pnath, and with Carter's silver key still clasped in his hand.

* * *

"I'm going to Kadath to rescue Carter," he said the next morning, with the key strung around his neck. 

Abby stared at him. "But why?"

"To rescue Carter," he repeated.

"Oh, I heard you the first time. Just not sure what the point is." 

"The  _ point _ is that he's not dead. He's still up there and he needs me to bring him back. He needs help." 

"The last time Randolph Carter needed your  _ help _ ," she spat, "he almost got us all killed because he couldn't take 'no' for an answer. Some of us  _ did _ get killed." 

"He tried to fix it!"

"And that puts him a step above most Dreamers. He did the bare minimum and realized actions have consequences. But Richard," she paused, levelling him with a pitying look, "he's disgusted by us. What do you expect is going to happen?" 

Pickman frowned at her. "I'll find him and I'll bring him home. He's my  _ friend _ and I care about him."

"At least take someone with you."

"I can't. I have to go alone." 

Abby snorted. "Dreamer stupidity is contagious, I see."

"Perhaps it is. Look after the clan while I'm gone, won't you?"

"I can't talk you out of this," she sighed. "Can I?"

Pickman shook his head, and turned to leave.

* * *

The night-gaunts left him far enough from that awful structure that sits atop Kadath that Pickman felt confident that his challenge would be valid, and he crept towards the peak as stealthily as only a ghoul could creep. There, he crouched behind an outcropping and hid from sight as the hideous Shantak-bird was led away from the fortress by two of the horned creatures that had once captured three of his people. Upon its scaled back were seated two figures, both clad in fabrics that he at first believed were white, but which caught the meagre light and scattered it into myriad colours in a manner impossible to capture in any earthly pigment.

The taller of the pair, regal and pshent-crowned and harsh of expression, could be none other than Nyarlathotep, Soul and Messenger of the Outer Gods, and Pickman was glad he could not see the being's eyes, for reasons he could not put name to. 

The shorter figure sat in front, wrapped in fine golden chains that might appear at first glance to be simple jewellery, until the viewer noticed that those encircling the wearer's wrists were connected, keeping them less than a foot apart. His feet were bare, and his eyes entirely vacant. They may as well have been carved from marble, for all their unseeing perfection.

There was nothing of Randolph Carter in that blank expression, nor was there any emotion at all.

As the procession passed him by, Pickman sprang from his hiding-place and caught ahold of Carter's waist, pulling him from the hideous mount and down to the rocky ground. 

Only it wasn't Carter in his arms any longer, but the rubbery, viper-like shape of one of Nyarlathotep's own hunting-horrors, and Pickman suddenly understood why the god had made no motion to prevent his actions. He almost dropped the thing in shock and fear, but just in time remembered what Carter had said. Nyarlathotep  _ wanted  _ him to let go, to forfeit the challenge so that he might bear the human away to the Court of Azathoth, and do as he pleased with whatever was left at the end. So Richard Upton Pickman clutched at the hunting-horror, nearly breaking its oily skin with his claws, and somehow wrestled it to the ground as it thrashed and beat its wings, covering it with his body to keep it from taking flight. 

Only it wasn't a hunting-horror in his arms any longer, but the formless ooze of a shoggoth. The viscous sludge oozed from under him, stretching out pseudopods in the direction of the Shantak-bird patiently waiting only a few feet away. Pickman struggled to find purchase on the amorphous thing, and felt it form fanged mouths to bite at him. But the skin of a ghoul is thick and hard to break, and Pickman had always been stubborn, and so he attempted to corral the shoggoth into a smaller space, and keep it close, with his claws sunk deep into the mass of eyes and teeth. Whether it was some restriction of the challenge that kept it from forming one of those maws around his hands, or some leftover shred of Randolph Carter's own will and mind, he could not say, but he was intensely grateful for it as he curled himself around the creature and tried desperately to keep hold of something that, by its very nature, could not be held. 

Only it wasn't the shoggoth in his arms any longer, but the half-rotted flesh of a byakhee, and he found to his horror that he was seated upon it. Quickly, he unhooked the claws of one hand long enough to shift position, before pulling it back to the ground before it could take off. It was a vile creature, insectoid in places, avian in others, perhaps mammalian or amphibious in others, and with an odd quality that reminded Pickman of those corpses that had long passed the point of edibility even for the ghouls. It was a flopping, reeking, disgusting thing, and whilst he'd never shied from horror, more often seeing splendour in it, there was something especially repellent about the byakhee - but he reminded himself that this was, on some level, Carter, and even if it wasn't, his clawed grip upon it was the only thing that stood between his old friend and a terrible fate. And so he held on. 

And then it wasn't the byakhee in his arms any longer.

Randolph Carter gazed up at him for a moment, eyes fogged, as though he had just awoken from a dream and still needed time to adjust himself. But then the fog lifted, and he was returning Pickman's death-grip. 

"You came for me," he said, face pressed into the crook of the ghoul's neck. "You saved me."

"Yes, you did," said the voice of Nyarlathotep from atop the almost-forgotten Shantak-bird. "You have completed your challenge, Richard Upton Pickman, and won him back from me. But you may only challenge  _ once _ , and I need not abide by any rules should either one of you come here again. Now  _ be gone _ , and pray to all space that we never meet again!"

And then there was only blackness, and when Pickman could see again he was returned to the warren that he had set out from. The rest of the North End ghouls began to notice, and crowd them, and ask questions that would need to be answered, and Abby was shoving her way to the front and glibbering obscenities, and Amina asked Arif something that sounded like  _ does this mean I have to give the sword back?  _ before Bera cuffed them both around the ears, but the only thing Pickman was paying attention to in that moment was Carter, bloodied from where Pickman's claws had punctured and raked at his skin and in need of new clothes and of replacement spectacles if any could be found, but laughing with relief. 

He knew Carter could not stay here with him, would not wish to join his people, but the thought did not pain him nearly so much as it would have years ago. He still would not dare to hope that Carter would ever be able to love him as he might have loved a human, and he would not presume to ask, or to let Carter know of his feelings whilst the human was still vulnerable, with nowhere else to go. He would not keep Carter anywhere he did not wish to be. 

He had a life here, and Carter had made sufficient connections in the wider Dreamlands that he would have few logistical troubles in starting a new one.

And as long as they kept far clear of the forbidding mountain that was Kadath, they would be safe.


End file.
